The Son Who Bombed His Mother's Plane

At 6:52 PM on November 1, 1955, United Airlines Flight 629 lifted off from Denver's Stapleton Airport bound for Portland, Oregon. The DC-6B carried 39 passengers and 5 crew members. Among the passengers was a 53-year-old woman named Daisie King, on her way to visit her daughter in Alaska.

Eleven minutes later, the plane exploded over a sugar beet farm near Longmont, Colorado. The blast was so violent that witnesses on the ground thought they'd seen a meteor. Wreckage scattered across two square miles. All 44 people aboard were killed instantly.

What investigators discovered in the following weeks would shock the nation. The bomb that destroyed Flight 629 wasn't planted by a terrorist or a madman. It was placed by Daisie King's own son, who had tucked 25 sticks of dynamite into her luggage while she wasn't looking. His motive was simple: insurance money. He had taken out multiple policies on his mother's life just before her flight. The total payout would have been $37,500.

Jack Gilbert Graham became one of the first people in American history executed for sabotaging an aircraft. His crime transformed aviation security. And the victims of Flight 629 — 44 people who had nothing to do with Graham's grudge against his mother — became the first casualties of what would become a recurring nightmare: the airplane bomb.

The Flight

Flight 629 was routine. The DC-6B was a workhorse of commercial aviation in the 1950s — reliable, comfortable, and safe. The weather over Colorado was clear. The crew was experienced. Nothing about the flight suggested danger.

The passenger manifest included businessmen, families, and tourists. A young couple was flying to Portland for their honeymoon. An Army sergeant was heading home on leave. Four children under the age of three were aboard. Daisie King, traveling alone, was in row 12.

At 7:03 PM, eleven minutes after takeoff, the plane was at 11,000 feet over Weld County when the bomb detonated. The explosion tore through the cargo hold, severing the tail section from the fuselage. The aircraft broke apart in midair, falling in pieces onto the farms below. There were no survivors.

"I heard a sound like thunder and looked up. There was fire in the sky, and pieces falling everywhere. I knew immediately it was an airplane. Nothing else falls from the sky like that."

— Witness, Longmont farmer

The Investigation

The FBI and Civil Aeronautics Board launched one of the largest investigations in aviation history. Over 200 agents combed the debris field, collecting wreckage and human remains. The pieces were transported to a Denver warehouse, where investigators began the grim work of reconstruction.

At first, mechanical failure seemed likely. But as investigators examined the wreckage, they found evidence that pointed to something else entirely. Metal fragments showed signs of explosive damage — pitting and stress marks inconsistent with structural failure. The pattern of destruction suggested a bomb in the cargo hold, not engine failure or fuel ignition.

The FBI began investigating everyone connected to the flight. They interviewed families of the victims, traced luggage, examined insurance policies. One name kept coming up: Jack Gilbert Graham, the 23-year-old son of victim Daisie King.

Graham had a troubled history. He had been arrested for forgery as a teenager. He had stolen from his mother's business. He bore a grudge against her for perceived slights dating back to his childhood, when she had briefly placed him in an orphanage. And just before her flight, he had taken out multiple insurance policies on her life — then driven her to the airport, insisting on carrying her luggage himself.

The Confession

FBI agents interviewed Graham multiple times. His answers were inconsistent. He couldn't explain why he'd bought so much insurance on his mother just before her flight. He couldn't explain why he'd insisted on handling her luggage. When agents searched his home, they found wire, electrical tape, and a receipt for 25 sticks of dynamite.

Graham's wife Gloria cracked first. Under questioning, she admitted that Jack had shown her a "Christmas present" for his mother — a package wrapped in brown paper that she later realized must have been the bomb. She hadn't known what it was, she said. She'd been afraid of her husband.

Confronted with the evidence, Graham confessed. He described building the bomb in his basement: 25 sticks of dynamite, a timer, a six-volt battery. He had wrapped it in a small toolbox, buried it under his mother's clothes, and carried her suitcase to the check-in counter himself. The timer was set to detonate about an hour after takeoff.

When asked why he did it, Graham showed no remorse. "I'd do it again if I could," he reportedly told investigators. He had hated his mother for years. The insurance money was a bonus.

"As far as feeling remorse for these people, I don't. I can't help it. Everybody pays their way and takes their chances. That's just the way it goes."

— Jack Gilbert Graham, Statement to prison doctors

The Trial

Jack Graham was charged with murder. The case presented a legal puzzle: there was no federal law against sabotaging an aircraft at the time. Graham was tried in Colorado state court for the murder of his mother alone — the 43 other deaths couldn't be charged because they occurred in a different county than where the bomb was planted.

The trial was brief. Graham initially recanted his confession, but the physical evidence was overwhelming. The dynamite purchase was documented. The insurance policies were documented. His wife testified against him. On May 5, 1956, the jury deliberated for just over an hour before returning a guilty verdict.

Graham was sentenced to death. His appeals failed. On January 11, 1957, he was executed in Colorado's gas chamber at Canon City. He was 24 years old. His last words, reportedly, were "I'd do it again."

The Legacy

Flight 629 was the first confirmed case of airline sabotage in U.S. history. It revealed a vulnerability that the aviation industry had never seriously considered: that someone might deliberately destroy an aircraft full of innocent people. The concept of airport security, as we know it today, didn't exist in 1955. There were no bag searches, no metal detectors, no questions about who packed your luggage.

The disaster prompted Congress to pass the Federal Aviation Act of 1958, which created the Federal Aviation Administration and gave it authority over aviation safety. The law made it a federal crime to interfere with air transportation — including sabotage, which could now be prosecuted without the jurisdictional complications that had plagued the Graham case.

Airlines began implementing security measures that seem primitive by modern standards but were revolutionary at the time. Insurance vending machines at airports — the kind Graham had used — were eventually phased out. Baggage procedures were tightened. The era of casual, unscreened air travel began its long decline.

The Forgotten

The 44 victims of Flight 629 are mostly forgotten today. Their names don't appear on memorials. Their deaths don't have an anniversary that anyone observes. They died in the first act of a tragedy that would be repeated again and again over the following decades — innocent people, killed by a bomb they never knew was there.

Among them: John Spitznagel, 25, flying to Portland to start a new job. Helen Hamer, 33, and her 13-month-old daughter, visiting family. Vicki Larsen, 2 years old, traveling with her mother. The honeymoon couple who had been married three days. The Army sergeant going home on leave. Forty-three people who had nothing to do with Jack Graham's hatred for his mother, killed because they happened to be on the same plane.

Daisie King herself was buried in Denver. Her son was buried in an unmarked grave after his execution — the prison didn't allow executed prisoners' families to claim the bodies. Jack Graham died hated and unmourned, having destroyed 44 lives for $37,500 he never collected.

On November 1, 1955, a plane exploded over Colorado because a man hated his mother. It's almost too banal to process — not a political statement, not terrorism, not madness. Just greed and spite, mixed with dynamite and a timer. Jack Graham wanted money and revenge. He got neither. He died in the gas chamber seventeen months after his mother died in the sky.

Flight 629 changed aviation. It forced an industry to confront a vulnerability it had never considered. It led to laws, regulations, and security measures that evolved over decades into the system we have today. Every time you take off your shoes at airport security, every time someone asks if anyone else packed your bags, you're experiencing the legacy of Jack Graham's crime.

The victims are forgotten. But what they died for — the realization that airplanes are targets, that security is necessary, that the unthinkable can happen — lives on. Flight 629 was the first. It wasn't the last. And we're still learning the lessons it taught.